Is 100K actually needed to study Freemasonry?

Over the last few years, I have noticed an alarming trend in occultism: Some students believe that they should get everything for free---as in esoteric Orders, groups, teachers, and writers should not get a dime from the students. These are the same type of students who do not believe in doing daily exercises or memorizing the basic terms. I thought that I saw the worst of it a couple of months ago when someone suggested that magical Orders should pay their students to be members.

Well, I was wrong.

Last night during one of my moderator runs on Facebook, I ran across a pending post that made me realize that it could get so much worse.

Now for those who have not heard my rant: Running an esoteric Order (group) costs money---candles, rent, handouts, etc. all cost money. And writing a book and teaching takes a person away from activities that would result in a paycheck. And I feel that it is unfair for the students to get these services for free, placing the entire monetary burden on occult leaders, especially when occult leaders have to shell out money for things like groceries.

Plus there is also the little fact that I had to pay for lessons, books, materials, and membership dues, as well as pass my Grade exams--therefore, I do not see why the modern generation of students should get a free ride. Yes, I believe that modern occult students should suffer as much as I did coming up the ranks.

In other words, I am an asshole who does not realize that modern students are vastly superior in wisdom to me, and that I am blessed to be in the mere presence of such enlightened souls.

How much of an asshole am I?

Take for instance, last night's post.

Here is a lad advertising a GoFundMe campaign to help him collect the money neccessary to buy materials to study the Masonic symbols. He shared his ad with over twenty Facebook groups. And he is only asking for a mere 100K (one hundred thousand dollars).

Yes, I said 100K.

What the hell is he trying to study? Primary sources? Handwritten manuscripts? George Washington's wig? Maybe he thinks that he needs to own a lodge.

Or maybe, my inner asshole says, he is trying to get other people to pay him not to work and be a full time student of Freemasonry. And by full time, I mean he sits on the sofa reading internet posts and never once steps into a lodge.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why this person is so special that we should fund their esoteric career. And yes, I looked at what little they had public on their Facebook profile , and there is nothing to indicate that this person is the next Albert Pike. I am not even sure that he is a member of a Freemason lodge....and that would be the first step to understanding Freemasonry, or so I would think.

But if you think that I am wrong, feel free to donate funds to him.

Or better yet, start up a GoFundMe campaign to pay me 100K not to make fun of him. It can't be good for his studies that people like me are using him as fodder on a slow news day. Think of the number of special snowflake students you could save from the likes of me if you funded me to....pet cats all day long...go back and get my Masters in a completely useless degree (either history or literature)...go to Rome and annoy Nick Farrell...help out my wife in the art studio...run naked though a Broncos game...the possiblities are endless---hell, toss enough money at me (100K, come on people!), and I might even finish the artwork for the Tarot deck that I am working on. And if you like, I can claim to be studying Freemasonry while I am doing so. After all, if you give me 100K, I too can be a special snowflake.

Remember special snowflakes need you to fund them, so that they get all the esoteric wisdom and knowledge for free.  Don't listen to those asshole occult teachers who believe that money should flow to the teacher and not towards the student.

#specialsnowflakesmatter

And he spammed this across 20+ FB groups last night.

100K to learn more about Freemasonry. 

Devil card A or B (Tarot Art poll)

Awhile back during one of the Tarot Blog Hops, I did a version of the Devil card for my Mad Uncle Morgan's Political Tarot. I wasn't completely happy with it; so last week, I re-did the background of the card. So now, the debate is whether version A (the first version) or Version B (the new background) looks better. What do you think--A or B?

Devil version A

Devil version B

Dance with the Devil (Tarot Blog Hop)

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(It is with great pride that I write my 1200th post on this blog--I was always told by my family that one of my problems is that I do not know how to shut up.)

Welcome to the first Solistice Tarot Blog Hop of 2015--in my neck of the woods, it is the Summer Solistice; meanwhile my friends down under are enjoying the Winter Solistice...though I am not sure that I would recognize it as being winter, given my strange Northern Hemisphere ways.

Today's Tarot Blog Hop is a trip through the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana. If you are doing the hop, you may have just came from Christiana Gaudet's blog, the second Temperence entry in this hop. Or you may be traveling backwards and just left S. Johanna Hill's blog, the second Devil entry of this particular Tarot Blog Hop.

I choose the Devil card because all the cards that I am comfortable with had already been spoken for. And I figured if I was going to deal with a card that I was uncomfortable with, I just as well struggle with the Devil card. After all, I was having trouble trying to figure out what my own version was going to look like.

Five minutes after picking the task of dealing with the Devil card, I knew exactly what my version would look like....

....so I guess that I am far more comfortable with the Devil than I thought I was.

Hello, we would like to talk to you about the Devil...

Being Wiccan, and a lifer at that, my vision of the Devil is not your typical Satan. For me, evil is the uglier aspects of nature; in particular, the ugly side of human nature. You know that part of humanity that lusts, becomes addicted, feels greed, and can explode in ugly violence. Quite often this side of humanity is played like a puppet by politicians, religious leaders, and ad executives.

In my version of the card, the mascot of an evil company is sitting on the altar. It might be the mascot of a big box store or restaurant chain. Or it might be an investment company. Or maybe it is the true image of the United States. Hanging from its horns is a bag of loot, and a stick. The bag could be filled with carrots, but it is probably money--money being a carrot that most people chase after.

(For those who are curious, the symbol on the bag is the astrological glyph for the asteriod Isis, the 42nd asteriod discovered by man. In astrology, it relates to issues of fragmentation versus wholeness, sibling issues, and androgyny issues.)

The couple in front of the altar, who are not chained to the altar, represent the voice of society, which informs most of us what is good and what is evil. One does not necessarily have to agree with what the voice of society says.

(The couple I used for this illustration are actually a couple of my friends, dressed up in the clothes that they wear while playing in their band. For the record, I do not think that they are actually evil....but I could be wrong; after all, they are musicians.)

Do you dare play Bingo with the Devil?

Besides, making my own version of the Tarot card, I also made a Bingo card of some of the things associated with the Devil card. It is part of a larger "art project" that I am working on. I did think about filming myself dancing, hence this post's title, but I decided that I didn't want anyone to go blind.

And because I was thinking about the Devil, alongside of my recent bout of making bad, bad videos, I did consider what I would use to represent the Devil in a video clip---it was not really hard to figure out. I have gotten in the habit of using a rather creepy looking Santa doll for all the really evil people that I have been talking about in my various Mad Uncle Morgan clips.

(No, you do not actually need to watch the video--it is there merely to illustrate my point.)


When you think about it, Santa could be a symbol of the Devil, especially if you are using my version of the Devil card. The modern nature of Santa Claus is pretty much in line with a crossroads demon, full of salesmanship, offering carrots, and torturing people with sticks. But that jaded view of Christmas and Santa might simply be my bad childhood speaking.

Anyways, thanks for reading.

If you are continuing with the Tarot Blog Hop, the next stop is S. Johanna Hill's blog, the second Devil entry of this particular Tarot Blog Hop. Or you might want to travel backwards to Christiana Gaudet's blog, who is talking about the Temperence card.

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There is always a boom (Tarot Blog Hop May 2015)

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Welcome to another Tarot Blog Hop.

During the last Tarot Blog Hop, I noticed some comments about needing to keep the distasteful cards in the Tarot deck. That got me to thinking that writing about how to cope with the distasteful Tarot cards would be an interesting topic. And given that I am the wrangler (cat herder) for this particular round of the Tarot Blog Hop---Bwahahaha!

There is a sort-of famous quote from Babylon Five that more or less goes:

No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There is always a boom.

And sometimes I think that this idea applies to the Tarot. One is sitting there doing a reading; everything looks fine, and then you flip over the Happy Squirrel...and you know that your client is in for the worst year of their life.

What? Your deck doesn't have a Happy Squirrel in it? What sad Tarot deck are you using?

The Happy Squirrel

 But seriously, every Tarot reader has been there, as well as anyone who has gotten at least one Tarot reading. And you do not need a Happy Squirrel to cause problems. Do you want a list of cards that can cause problems?

Of course, you do.

Here is the list of Tarot cards that can cause problems...

All of them.

Given the right circumstances, every card is a Happy Squirrel in disguise.

But some cards are more troublesome than others. Each Tarot reader has their own personal list of cards that scream, "BOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!"

The Hanged Man

One of the cards on my personal list is the Hanged Man. While there are many times when it is to be read as a sacrifice for a higher purpose or a better situation, there are times that it is far more troublesome. And this troublesome nature comes from its origin centuries ago.

In the oldest surving Tarot decks, the Hanged Man is often someone who was a traitor or enemy of the family that the Tarot deck was made for. If Jesus would have owned a Tarot deck, the Hanged Man would have been Judas.

And the possibilities for this type of energy is still rampant. Turn on the news, surf Facebook, look out your window, there are plenty of people to dislike. And today, we have social media...which leads to the caution:

Don't get filmed doing something that you don't want to see on Facebook. Today, angry villagers are not armed with pitchforks and torches; no, it is Facebook and Twitter that you have to worry about. Do you really want your own personal picket line?

Lightning Struck Tower

Another distasteful card is the Lightning Stuck Tower. While the Hanged Man is the poster child of greed and mistakes, the Lightning Stuck Tower is more along the lines of the hand of God.

Again, social media plays a role in how we encounter the card's energies in the present. One does not need to watch the nightly news to learn of the latest nature disaster sweeping away innocent villagers.

My advice for dealing with the Lightning Stuck Tower is to avoid putting yourself in danger.

Yes, that is easier said than done. But you can minimize some of your risk. For instance, don't scream that God is a Happy Squirrel while on a golf course in the middle of a thunderstorm...because someone might actually get that on film, and you really do not want to star in your own Darwin Reward video, do you?

Thanks for reading the thoughts of my rather nutty mind, and please check out some of the other bloggers who participated in this Tarot Blog Hop.

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Updating the Tarot

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Wekcome to the Spring Fling edition of the Tarot Blog Hop. Our organizer for this hop, Ania Marczyk, posed a question to our merry little group of Tarot bloggers--Given that the Tarot is a product of its time period, created five hundred years ago, is the Tarot elastic enough that it does not need updating? or does the Tarot need to be modified to bring it into the modern world?

As always, my answer is one that just proves that I am of two minds about everything.

No, the Tarot does not need updating. The type of events and people that are present in the Tarot five hundred years ago are still with us today. There is absolutely no need to update the Tarot.

Well, except one. It is damn good fun to update the Tarot. So while the underlying structure of the Tarot makes it timeless, I am still going to be interested in, and willing to create modern versions of the Tarot.

(It should not be a big surprise that this is my position---after all, I updated the Fives in a previous Tarot Blog Hop. ex. The Five of Swords was a pro-wrestler.)

One of my favorite "updated" cards is the Magician card is from an (live-action) role playing game, Magic the Ascension. While the Magic the Ascension Tarot deck was created as a prop for the game, and used as a themed set of illustrations, and very much keyed to the worldview of the game, a few of the cards are worthy of consideration if one wanted to update the symbolism of the Tarot.

The Mage from the Magic the Ascension Tarot deck. 

While there is a lot of imagery specific to the game in this version of the card, there is something that I would be tempted to use if I ever did a modern deck of my own, and that is the elemental "tools" on the altar (table). The four elemental items are all modern (well, maybe not the key...but bear with me): a gun (aka firearm) is used to represent the element of Fire; a soda can is used to represent the element of Water; a key is used to represent the element of Air; and a set of credit cards is used to represent the element of Earth.

(I apologize for the following cards being only in black and white---a family issue chewed into my art time.)

One of the cards that I think needs updating is the High Priest or Pope. The reason for this is that for many people, the Catholic Church is not the Church that they know. In the modern world, at least in the United States, the evangelists are the keepers of the faith. Interestingly enough, the corruption that was associated with the Catholic Church in the times that the Tarot was first created can now be found in the ranks of the tele-evangelists--I assume there is some deep spiritual significance and lesson to be learned from this, though I am too tired to think of it at this particualr moment.

The modern High Priest or Pope is the Evangelist. 

A few years ago, I spent some time reading for teenagers. One of the things that I learned is while they understand the ranks behind the Court cards, many of them could not easily translate the older imagery into modern terms. Therefore, I highly tempted to update the Court cards.

This first example is from the suit of Pentacles. In this card, I show the Page of Pentacles as a youth working in some minimum wage job. This may seem to be an odd association, but I am standing by it because a lot of people who consult fortune tellers are the poor, whose associations with money tends to be poverty and minimum wage jobs, and not the wealth of the traditional version of this suit's Court cards. Or maybe it was just me that ended up having those associations, and those types of experiences...and almost everyone I have ever worked with.

Modern Page of Pentacles is the minimum wage worker. 

The second example of my attempt to update the Court cards is my version of the Page of Wands. Here we have an youthful artist, who is passionate both about their art and their politics. And yes, I accept the idea that artists smoke dope; that includes about half the pottery students that I know. I am quite sure if the Tarot was invented today that there would be a card representing the evil that this type of person can lead to....though in the original decks, it was a game for the worthy, therefore, this type of person (as well as my previous example) would not have gotten a Court card (probably both would have been dumped into the Fool card).

Modern Page of Fire is a pothead, sometimes in both senses of the term. 

Anyways, that is all the updating of the Tarot that I had time to finish (I have a whole list of cards that I have not even penciled yet). Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to visit my little corner of the blogosphere. And please consider checking out some of the other blog entries that my fellow and lady Tarot bloggers wrote.

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